Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The Federal Government will be begin to verify in the next two weeks, over 330,820 employees in 486 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) being paid salaries through the Integrated Pay-roll Personnel Information System (IPPIS) Platform.
The employees to be verified in the exercise, which begins, on Monday, are those that have completed their update on the on-line verification portal.
The Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Winifred Oyo-Ita, disclosed this at a press briefing on the Integrated Pay-roll Personnel Information System (IPPIS) Verification Exercise scheduled to hold nationwide.
She explained that the online data update started in April 2017, more than 15 months ago to give ample opportunity for all Personnel to log in and carry out their data update. “Those who fail to carry out the on-line update are therefore excluded from this verification exercise,” she warned.
Oyo-Ita said the exercise is in fulfillment of one of the cardinal principles of the introduction of the IPPIS programme which is “blocking loopholes and discouraging corruption in the administration of Personnel Records, it is important that the HR information on the IPPIS Portal be cleaned up with a view to having credible data for both payroll and personnel administration and analysis.
“The upcoming verification exercise is therefore to authenticate documents of the individual employees of the Federal Government and the procedure is that every employee will present themselves for screening and the documents scanned into the system.
“At the end of the verification exercise, discrepancies will be resolved to ensure that what is finally uploaded into the IPPIS platform has high level of data integrity.
“The Verification exercise shall commence on monday the 16th July, 2018 with the Core MDAs i.e. the Ministries, Offices and scheduled Commissions and it is expected to be completed in two weeks.
“All the concerned MDAs are to cooperate with the verifiers by providing enabling environment for the successful conduct of the exercise according to the circulated time table.
“Verification of the other MDAs not covered in the first phase shall be covered in the first phase. Finally, the verified data will be migrated to the database of the IPPIS platform. This is expected to pave the way for the automated HR processes.”
Oyo-Ita advised all Federal Government employees to partake in the verification exercise as the process is on to capture even those that are hospitalized and those that are outside the country.
“The consequence of non- compliance is having your data deleted from the Federal Government Employee Database. The HR module will increase productivity and improve transparency within the public service such that there is Employee Traceability, Personnel data Integrity, Transaction accountability, Process delivery, and Planning Database,” she said.
The Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information (IPPIS) is one of the Federal Government Public Service Reforms initiatives which commenced in the year 2006 with a view to attaining transparency, accuracy, safety and reliability in the management of Personnel Records while also curtailing avoidable excesses in Personnel Costs.
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) on 12 July, 2017 approved the 2017-2020 Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan (FCSSIP) of the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF).
The 2017 2020 FCSSIP has eight (8) priority areas identified and selected based on their potential for impact and relevance to the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) implementation roles of the OHCSF.
The OHCSF in the bid to commence the implementation of the eight Priority areas has constituted the Project Management Teams for each of the eight priority areas, provided a project management office, commenced sensitization of stakeholders within the Service, engaged multilateral/development partners and some private sector partners. The overall objective of the IPPIS Project Management Team is to “Accelerate roll-out of the full implementation of Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), Human Resource module”